ity of
those who should perform that work, and himself using that money;
the innumerable bribes and illegal exactions that they impose, and
the taxes that they collect through numberless separate judgments:
[all these] make the office sufficiently lucrative, although in
that country, scarcely any importance is attached to many of these
irregularities (even by those who are injured by them), which custom
has almost sanctioned as law.

The election of corporate members is carried on under the presidency
of the provincial chief by twelve of the most prominent men
in the town--half of them drawn by lots cast by those who were
gobernadorcillos and cabezas de barangay, and the other six from
the cabezas in actual office; while he who is gobernadorcillo at the
time of election votes also. The individual who obtains most votes
is proposed to the general government as being first on the list; he
who follows him in the number of votes, in the second; and the actual
_pedaneo_ [i.e. a subordinate officer, here the gobernadorcillo],
in the third. From that list of three [_terna_], the governor-general
appoints one, after seeing the report of the president of the election.

The cabezas de barangay are chiefs of fifty families, those from
whom are collected the contributions that form part of the revenues
of the treasury and government. This institution, antedating the
conquest, is most useful, the more, for the same reasons, since
the gobernadorcillos come to be to their members of barangays or
those they rule, the same that those pedaneos [i.e.], the cabezas]
are to the generality of the inhabitants. The actual cabezas or the
ex-cabezas, with the gobernadorcillo and the ex-captains (as those
who have exercised that office are designated), form the _principalia_
[i.e., chieftain class, or nobility].

Their usual dress is a black jacket, European trousers, mushroom
hat, and colored slippers; many even wear varnished [i.e., patent
leather] shoes. The shirt is short, and worn outside the trousers. The
gobernadorcillo carries a tasseled cane [_baston_], the lieutenants
wands [_varas_]. On occasions of great ceremony, they dress formally
in frock coat, high-crowned hat--objects of value that are inherited
from father to son.

On the day on which the gobernadorcillo takes his office, his town
has a great festival [_fiestajan_]. All eat, drink, smoke, and amuse
themselves at the expense of the _municipe_ [i.e., the citizen who
is elec